Archive for ‘Humor’

Dr. Manuel Rosa long time historian, some-time IT professional is returning to the USA again on:

Feb 10th, 2015 at the: Florida International University (in Miami, FL) to present, “COLUMBUS: The Untold Story“. This was brought to my attention by, “Lourenço Damas” on 16th December. Lourenco has been a previous commenter/contributor to this blog.

I have posted a few times on Manuel Rosa and his research that Christopher Columbus may have been the son of King Wladyslaw III, going by the name, “Henry the German (Alemao)” to hide from Turks who thought they killed him. When is the book going to be published in English?

To review the factual claims … read this blog article. Some arguments are compelling, others are an exegetical stretch. I thought we were waiting on DNA to confirm/refute this theory? Where is that DNA test, Dr. Rosa? This is beginning to feel like “Ancient Astronaut” TV fodder since it does not progress to accepted fact by continued research and/or intellectual debate amongst historians in historical journals.

King Richard III was dead, you must admit for over 100 years or this story will make no sense. So more than a century had expired before the bard ever gave him the tragedy treatment. King Richard III ‘s reputation was such a cesspool of swirling accusations and counter claims that by Shakespeare’s time he is portrayed as “a physically deformed machiavellian villain, albeit courageous and witty …”. Now it is indeed true that king died in battle (final and decisive battle of the War of Roses) and was hastily buried and his remains were lost for just over a half-millenia.

Richard III was lost and spent the the first 500+ years of his eternal life, ignominiously buried beneath a parking lot in Leicester. They (the Brits) finally located where his bones were and the bones were unearthed in 2012 . Even though they had to ascertain whose bones were unearthed in that parking lot, this re-commenced a less violent and less heroic struggle for Richard III ‘s bones. After half a millenia in the ground we developed the ability look at DNA and via mtDNA and compared to those of a direct descendant of Richard’s sister. So now we have the remains of King Richard III for certain and as I foreshadowed the forces of several armies immediately sought to lay claim to the bones. This mayhem precipitated a judicial review. The magistrates have ruled and now a proper party, er, um, ahem, burial will be had and Richard III will be interred Saturday, March 28, 2015 at the Leicester Cathedral. There the king will lie in repose for three days prior to beginning the next part of his eternal life. King Richard III’s remains will lie in repose for three days, during which time the public can pay their respects. The first service, on March 26, will be followed by similar events on March 27 and 28 leaving plenty of time for people to plan their vacations to be a part of this august ceremony and be able to purchase all of the bric-a-brac that is incumbent at major genealogical events !

Now we come to the heart of the matter for this jester. I inveigle all of my Anglo-Genealogists and Royalists of all stripes to properly update their family trees to show the accurate burial date and place of poor Richard III. The king’s remains will now be deposited inside a lead ossuary placed inside an English-oak coffin — all of which will be placed inside a brick-lined vault in the cathedral floor of Leicester Cathedral. Let the Wikipedia editors take note too!

So let it be written.

#AccuracyInGenealogy

P.S. — As the picture shows, Shakespeare was at least correct in the physical deformity part of his portrayal.

Stanczyk is a bibliophile, possibly even a bibliophage. Being a jester for three kings gives me an especial fondness for authors/stories that have a jester/fool as one of the characters. So Stanczyk has a special fondness for William Shakespeare. Imagine how this jester was jolted to find a story mashed-up from Shakespeare with a jester … wait-a-minute … who has a monkey … named Jeff? Oh rapture, huzzah! How did I miss the fact that Christopher Moore had these characters in a prior novel … Fool?Note to self go back and buy Fool !

I had only just finished the first chapter when I realized this story was a mash-up. It appeared to me to be a mash-up of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (comedy) and Othello (tragedy) and Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado (mystery). I was lured by the clever riff upon the Merchant of Venice title and naïvely assumed this would be a take off of that story. But I got more, much more than even I had bargained for and a monkey named Jeff to boot.

I like to examine a book like some kind of genealogy document. What is its structure? Is there anything unusual or unexpected? How many pages/chapters? So after I read three chapters, I decided to do this kind of examination. I recommend you read the first three chapters too before you do this examination. I saw an afterword. It was by the author and he gives his deconstruction of his novel — most interesting! But it can be a bit of a spoiler. Still I did read the Afterword before I read the last chapter … I just could not help myself. I already decided to invest myself in the book and was uproariously entertained so far. Having the author give insight, also added to my wanting to complete the book, but I did appreciate some of the inside “skinny” he gives, so I can ensure I get all that Mr. Moore dishes up.

I laughed at his wit. Its right there in the preface (called The Stage and after the Cast [Dramatis Personae] ). So even before the story begins, the humor has already set in. So I was surprised at his droll wit — not that he had it. Its just that I had Mr. Moore pegged in my mind as a Terry Pratchett. Indeed, I assumed he was some kind of Londoner. So I was surprised when I read his Wikipedia page that he was born in Toledo, Ohio. He writes the dialogue with such obvious British humor and dialect that I had assumed British, not someone born where many of my ancestors had settled, land of the algae bloomed water supply (that has not, so far, caught fire as Lake Erie has been known to do).

The surprise character (at least I think she/it will be a surprise since I was given an inkling in the Afterword which I read beforehand) and its introduction into the storyline called to mind for me, a bit of Beowulf. Especially since this story was already known by me (before the Afterword) to be a mash-up, so perhaps I was now hunting for mash in this uplifting and funny story. So many of the characters are very likeable that I do not know who to cheer for and who to jeer for. What a delightful diversion.

Its a novel in a guise of a play. Hence, the Cast and the Stage. But there is also a Chorus (like some kind of Greek play) and the Chorus is a character too! The book is so clever, this jester decided to Follow @TheAuthorGuy on Twitter.

Stanczyk recommends this book to all who like a good story infused with humor ala Pratchett. Its absurdist proportions appeal to my Slavic soul. The meta joke that an American can write the British dialect with such humor and panache will appeal to Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adams fans. Do not wait for this book to become available as an e-book on your library’s e-book facility, the line is too long. Go directly to your local library (or bookstore) and get the physical copy — much quicker than waiting for the Overdrive download to become available. I guess most people are afraid to enter the physical world and reticent to leave their Internet bus stop. Excuse me, I will have to go to Marseilles now.

Dear Readers this neo-post-compassionate-conservative-apocalyptic-dystopian history is from the days of the year 2019. Contrary to the comical Internet Mayan conspiracy kooks, the world did not end in 2012 despite Mitt Romney being elected President of the USA and then re-elected leader of the entire English Speaking Free World in 2016 — an election that everyone now knows he purchased with his considerable undocumented wealth. We should have listened to Vanity Fairback in 2012 — but there were just too few readers back then. Oh the misery we have endured since …

It has been a hard seven years under President Romney. Because, of the influence of the Tea Party Evangelicals and Romney’s considerable undocumented wealth he became President.

Back on 4th July 2012, the World Science community discovered the Higgs Boson quantum particle — the God Particle. This so enraged Romney, that the first thing that President Romney did was have Vain Capitalist LLC buy all the newspapers (especially the Murdoch Press & Hacking Software company) and leverage the hell out of them — supposedly to enhance his own considerable undocumented wealth. But that was just the ostensible reason.

They ended up bankrupting all of the press and media outlets — not hard to do in those days of the Great Recession and barely anybody reading at all and almost none at all in the South. So the newspapers and other media went out of business and now there were only the bloggers and the Internet to keep data and information alive.

Then in 2017 when President Romney was re-elected in a very suspect election. He immediately moved to control the Internet and to ban blogging software. This precipitated World War III , which he financed with his considerable undocumented wealth while the European leaders were still so busy talking about their imaginary currency (I believe it was called, the Euro) the USA conquered the UK and then most of the European continent (except for Greece, Spain and Italy — which were non-profitable countries), Canada, New Zealand and Australia. That is why he is President of the English Speaking Free World. He is now trying to eradicate blogs and by so doing eliminate the “dangerous” bloggers too. Oddly that is how the USA finally got its first metric standard (Celsius) which it used to confuse the issue of Global Warming.

It has been historic this anti science and publication administration. First they denied the age of the Earth and its fossils, then they denied Evolution, then they denied Global Warming — even when half the US was baking like HELL back in 2012??? The last straw was the Higgs Boson, ironically the God Particle caused these religionists to pursue the pogrom against science and information.

There has been a long history of this anti knowledge movement. First the Catholics tried to censor scientists like Copernicus (who took his knowledge to the grave) and then Gallileo. By the time Darwin had appeared, Prostestants had joined in too. So by 2012, America had a breed of religionists called “Evangelicals” who were people who Evangelized against science and reading and such things calling them the Devil’s playground. They used to rewrite biblical stories to say that the Bible’s prophets were all about the profit and were against charity. I know this sounds incredible and even unbelievable to you future historians, but I swear it is all true. If you can find any Internet documents or archived newspapers (a physical piece of pages of paper with printed texts that contained information — completely devoid of any digital means) you may be able to read it for yourself — if anyone still does that in the future.

So for the sake of the future. I am asking my blog readers to memorize my blog posts. Just pick your favorites and commit them to memory. Maybe you can write them down on paper if your family has a history of dementia. At any rate, pass them down in your family. Read them at holidays.

All remaining bloggers that have not yet been silenced are calling for their readers to do this for their blogs too. We must be able to preserve knowledge through these information Dark Ages that we are entering.

Eye of Newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork, and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg, and howlet’s wing,–
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.

–Macbeth, the 2nd Witch

Stanczyk has been a big fan of the Bard for a lonnnnng time! It seems like eons. He was big into jesters and for that I applaud Shakespeare.

His works always seem prescient and applicable to the times at hand. I believe Shakespeare is second to the Bible in terms of being quoted. Has anyone applied the “psuedo-science” of Gematria to Shakespeare? I know about the “Bible Code” and I am pretty sure that mathematicians have used Moby Dick to find predictions in these texts in some kind of Nostradamus-like process of divination. But has any text been more lucid or evident upon the page without any mathematical calculation at all? I daresay not.

Let me hasten to post this article before the GOP flavor of the month disappears like so much Häagen-Dazs black walnut.